“I wish to ask you your candid opinion about the Jews.  Some people say they are the curse of the country; others again, that Hungarian commerce would be nowhere without them.”

“I will tell you what happens,” replied my friend, evading a direct answer to my latter observation.  “A wretched Jew comes into this village, or some other place—­it does not matter, it is always the same story.  He comes probably from Galicia as poor as a rat, he settles himself in the village, and sells slivovitz on credit to the foolish peasant, who, besotted with drink and debt, gets into his meshes; in the end, the Jew having sucked the blood of his victims, possesses himself of their little property, finds himself the object of universal hatred, and then he moves on.  He makes a fresh start in some other place, beginning on a higher rung of the ladder; and you will find him sitting in the highest seats before he has done.”

“If your people were less of spendthrifts and managed their affairs themselves, then the Jews would cease to find a harvest amongst you.”

“Yes, that is true,” he answered; “but we are not practical; we do not organise well.  The Jew always manages to be the middle-man between ourselves and the consumers.”

“But without the Jew you would perhaps not even get so near to the consumer,” I observed quietly.

My host puffed out a volume of smoke, and after a pause observed, before he placed his pipe again between his lips, “In this part of the country, in the Szeklerland, the better class of merchants are nearly all Armenians.”

Apropos of the tax question, I have looked into the matter since, and I am rather surprised to find the proportion not so heavy as I thought; on the whole population it is about L1 a-head—­certainly less than is borne by many other states.  In England, I believe, we are taxed at over L2 a-head.  Then, again, it is true that since 1870 there has been an annual deficit, and the equilibrium of income and expenditure can hardly be counted upon just yet; still things are moving in the right direction.  The Hungarians have been reproached for managing their finances badly since the compromise with Austria in 1867, when the revenue came exclusively under their own control.  But in answer they say, that having so lately entered the community of states, they found themselves in the position of a minor who comes into house and lands that have need of every sort of radical repair and improvement.  Hungary has had to spend heavily upon road-making, bridges, railroads, sanatory and other economic improvements, and very heavily for rectification of the course of the Danube; in fact they have ambitiously set themselves too much to do in the time.  They have rendered Buda-Pest, with its magnificent river embankments, one of the finest capitals in Europe.  The Magyar does everything with a degree of splendour that savours of the Oriental.  They know not the meaning of the homely adage which tells a man to “cut his coat according to his cloth.”